Education

Field(s) of specialization

Profile

Victor Sōgen Hori received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Stanford University in 1976 and that same year was ordained a Zen monk. After devoting the next thirteen years to training the Rinzai Zen headquarters temple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, he returned to Canada to begin academic life. He has taught in the Faculty of Religious Studies since 1993 and is a member of the Centre for East Asian Research and the Centre for Medicine Ethics and Law. Professor Hori’s research topics include Asian religion and culture, the teaching of Buddhist philosophy, and the kōans of the Zen masters.

"Teaching and Learning in the Rinzai Zen Monastery," Journal of Japanese Studies, 20:1 (Winter 1994), 5-35.

Books and monographs

Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Zen Koan Practice. Compiled and translated by Victor Sogen Hori. (Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture No. 4). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Articles/chapters in books and monographs

"Steps in Koan Practice," in Sitting With Koans, edited by John Daido Loori. Forthcoming 2004. (Reprint of pp. 16-29 from Zen Sand).

Preface and "Liberal Education and the Teaching of Buddhism" in The Wheel and the Web: Collected Papers of the Teaching Buddhism Conference, edited by Victor Sogen Hori, Richard P. Hayes and Mark Shields (London: Curzon Press, 2002).

"Kensho and Koan in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum," in The Koan, edited by Steven Heine and Dale Wright (Oxford University Press, 2000), 280-315.

"Japanese Zen in America," in The Faces of American Buddhism, edited by Charles Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka (University of California Press, 1999), 49-78.

"Americanizing Japanese Zen", in Faces of American Buddhism, Charles Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka eds. University of California Press, 1997.

"Teaching and Learning in the Rinzai Zen Monastery," reprinted in Teaching and Learning in Japan, ed. by Thomas Rohlen and Gerald LeTendre (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 20-49.

Reviews

Book Review: Opening a Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters by Steven Heine (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2004) 188-193.